The Optimist's Daughter
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The Optimist's Daughter
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Narrated by:
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Eudora Welty
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By:
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Eudora Welty
About this listen
This story of a young woman's confrontation with death and her past is a poetic study of human relations.
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2 out of 5 stars
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A Great Novel, just Poor for Audio
- By James A. Dittes on 08-13-16
By: Helen Oyeyemi
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The Sound and the Fury
- By: William Faulkner
- Narrated by: Grover Gardner
- Length: 8 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 1,860
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,400
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Story4 out of 5 stars 1,398
The Sound and the Fury is the tragedy of the Compson family, featuring some of the most memorable characters in literature: beautiful, rebellious Caddy; the manchild Benjy; haunted, neurotic Quentin; Jason, the brutal cynic; and Dilsey, their black servant. Their lives fragmented and harrowed by history and legacy, the character’s voices and actions mesh to create what is arguably Faulkner’s masterpiece and one of the greatest novels of the twentieth century.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Hang in
- By W.Denis on 07-11-05
By: William Faulkner
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The Blind Assassin
- By: Margaret Atwood
- Narrated by: Margot Dionne
- Length: 18 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 2,094
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 1,403
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Story4 out of 5 stars 1,396
For the past twenty-five years, Margaret Atwood has written works of striking originality and imagination. In The Blind Assassin, she stretches the limits of her accomplishments as never before, creating a novel that is entertaining and profoundly serious. The novel opens with these simple, resonant words: "Ten days after the war ended, my sister drove a car off the bridge." They are spoken by Iris, whose terse account of her sister Laura's death in 1945 is followed by an inquest report proclaiming the death accidental.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Good book, TERRIBLE audio!
- By Whitney on 04-27-09
By: Margaret Atwood
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Paradise
- By: Toni Morrison
- Narrated by: Toni Morrison
- Length: 15 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 249
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 214
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 211
In Paradise - her first novel since she was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature - Toni Morrison gives us a bravura performance. As the book begins deep in Oklahoma early one morning in 1976, nine men from Ruby (pop. 360), in defense of "the one all-black town worth the pain", assault the nearby Convent and the women in it. From the town's ancestral origins in 1890 to the fateful day of the assault, Paradise tells the story of a people ever mindful of the relationship between their spectacular history and a void.
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5 out of 5 stars
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MORRISON AT HER MOST COMPLEX
- By Kennedi Hill on 11-07-19
By: Toni Morrison
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Everything That Rises Must Converge
- By: Flannery O’Connor
- Narrated by: Bronson Pinchot, Karen White, Mark Bramhall, and others
- Length: 9 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 1,303
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 1,106
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 1,116
This collection of nine short stories by Flannery O'Connor was published posthumously in 1965. The flawed characters of each story are fully revealed in apocalyptic moments of conflict and violence that are presented with comic detachment.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Pride goeth before the fall
- By Ryan on 08-14-13
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One of Ours
- By: Willa Cather
- Narrated by: Kristen Underwood
- Length: 13 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 129
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 95
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Story4 out of 5 stars 94
Claude Wheeler resembles the youngest son of an American fairy tale. His fortune is ready-made for him, but he refuses to settle for it. Alienated from his crass father and pious mother, all but rejected by a wife who reserves her ardor for missionary work, and dissatisfied with farming, Claude is an idealist without an ideal to cling to. It is only when his country enters the First World War that Claude finds what he has been searching for all his life.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Cather's writing is impeccable
- By Kelly on 12-20-19
By: Willa Cather
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The Ballad of the Sad Café
- By: Carson McCullers
- Narrated by: David Ledoux, Joe Barrett, Therese Plummer, and others
- Length: 5 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 152
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 128
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Story4 out of 5 stars 129
A classic work that has charmed generations of readers, this collection assembles Carson McCullers' best stories, including her beloved novella The Ballad of the Sad Cafe. A haunting tale of a human triangle that culminates in an astonishing brawl, the novella introduces readers to Miss Amelia, a formidable southern woman whose cafe serves as the town's gathering place. Among other fine works, the collection also includes "Wunderkind", McCullers' first published story, written when she was only 17, about a musical prodigy who suddenly realizes she will not go on to become a great pianist.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Literate short stories
- By RueRue on 02-23-16
By: Carson McCullers
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Steampunk! An Anthology of Fantastically Rich and Strange Stories
- By: Kelly Link - editor, Gavin J. Grant - editor
- Narrated by: Sarah Coomes, Nico Evers-Swindell, Shannon McManus, and others
- Length: 12 hrs and 46 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 110
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 93
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Story4 out of 5 stars 94
Imagine an alternate universe where romance and technology reign. Where tinkerers and dreamers craft and recraft a world of automatons, ornate clockworks, calculating machines, and other marvels that. Where scientists and schoolgirls, fair folk and Romans, intergalactic bandits, and intrepid orphans - decked out in corsets, clockwerk suits, and tall black boots - solve dastardly crimes, escape from monstrous predicaments, consult oracles, and hover over volcanoes in steam-powered airships.
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4 out of 5 stars
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MMMM, Orca Bacon
- By Jim "The Impatient" on 09-14-13
By: Kelly Link - editor, and others
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Celia Garth
- By: Gwen Bristow
- Narrated by: Gabra Zackman
- Length: 13 hrs and 38 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 168
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 147
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 146
A bustling port city, Charleston, South Carolina, is the crossroads of the American Revolution, where supplies and weapons for the rebel army must be unloaded and smuggled north. From the window of the dressmaker's shop where she works, lovely Celia Garth, recently engaged to the heir to a magnificent plantation, watches all of this thrilling activity. When the unthinkable occurs and the British capture and occupy Charleston, bringing fiery retribution to the surrounding countryside, Celia sees her world destroyed.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Very enjoyable listen
- By Stevon on 05-09-21
By: Gwen Bristow
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A Tree Grows in Brooklyn
- By: Betty Smith
- Narrated by: Kate Burton
- Length: 14 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4.5 out of 5 stars 8,155
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 6,807
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Story4.5 out of 5 stars 6,770
A moving coming-of-age story set in the 1900s, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn follows the lives of 11-year-old Francie Nolan, her younger brother Neely, and their parents, Irish immigrants who have settled in the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn. Johnny Nolan is as loving and fanciful as they come, but he is also often drunk and out of work, unable to find his place in the land of opportunity.
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4 out of 5 stars
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Book: flawless. SKIP THE RECORDED INTRO!!
- By Wild Wise Woman on 09-04-11
By: Betty Smith
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Go Set a Watchman
- A Novel
- By: Harper Lee
- Narrated by: Reese Witherspoon
- Length: 6 hrs and 57 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 16,499
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 15,006
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Story4 out of 5 stars 14,962
An historic literary event: the publication of a newly discovered novel, the earliest known work from Harper Lee, the beloved, best-selling author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning classic To Kill a Mockingbird. Originally written in the mid-1950s, Go Set a Watchman was the novel Harper Lee first submitted to her publishers before To Kill a Mockingbird. Assumed to have been lost, the manuscript was discovered in late 2014.
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5 out of 5 stars
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To Kill A Mockingbird vs Go Set A Watchman
- By Sara on 07-15-15
By: Harper Lee
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The Plague of Doves
- By: Louise Erdrich
- Narrated by: Peter Francis James, Kathleen McInerney
- Length: 11 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 513
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 364
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Story4 out of 5 stars 362
The unsolved murder of a farm family haunts the small, white, off-reservation town of Pluto, North Dakota. The vengeance exacted for this crime and the subsequent distortions of truth transform the lives of Ojibwe living on the nearby reservation and shape the passions of both communities for the next generation.
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1 out of 5 stars
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Avoid this Plague
- By Andre on 05-16-08
By: Louise Erdrich
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Grand Central
- Original Stories of Postwar Love and Reunion
- By: Melanie Benjamin, Amanda Hodgkinson, Pam Jenoff, and others
- Narrated by: Carla Mercer-Meyer
- Length: 12 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall4 out of 5 stars 71
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Performance4.5 out of 5 stars 62
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Story4 out of 5 stars 64
On any particular day, thousands upon thousands of people pass through New York City's Grand Central Terminal, through the whispering gallery, beneath the ceiling of stars, and past the information booth and its beckoning four-faced clock, to whatever destination is calling them. It is a place where people come to say hello and good-bye. And each person has a story to tell.
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3 out of 5 stars
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Grand Central: Memories
- By ZacharyKindle Customer on 05-03-17
By: Melanie Benjamin, and others
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The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty
- By: Eudora Welty
- Narrated by: Barbara Rosenblat, Jessica Almasy, Victor Bevine, and others
- Length: 32 hrs and 18 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall3.5 out of 5 stars 230
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Performance4 out of 5 stars 192
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Story4 out of 5 stars 184
This complete collection includes all of the published stories of Eudora Welty. There are 41 stories in all, including those in the earlier collections A Curtain of Green, The Wide Net, The Golden Apples, and The Bride of the Innisfallen, as well as previously uncollected stories.
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5 out of 5 stars
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Too Good For Audio
- By Yennta on 06-18-12
By: Eudora Welty
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Essential Welty
- By: Eudora Welty
- Narrated by: Eudora Welty
- Length: 1 hr and 12 mins
- Unabridged
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